For the first part of the Israel Faces project I have chosen to write the profile on Chaya Leah Guggenheim, a speech therapist who made Aliya several years ago and now lives in Efrat. As a speech therapist, Chaya Leah's job is to help people with speaking disorders, such as stuttering, discover that they can control their problem and learn to speak clearly. Through out this project, I hope to learn how to help people help themselves, as Chaya Leah helps people fix their problems with speech. I would also like to learn about her own experiences of making Aliya, especially as I made Aliya this past summer and would like to compare it to others' experiences.
Profile of Chaya Leah Guggenheim
Chaya Leah Guggenheim is a speech therapist who grew up in London, England, as the youngest of three children, with two doting, yet bullying, older brothers. Her father was a lawyer and businessman while her mother studied art history and sold antique jewelry.
Having always dreamed of living in Israel, Chaya Leah moved to Israel shortly after marrying her husband, Chaim, so he could learn in yeshiva. Though they lived in Har Nof for the first year, the couple soon moved to Efrat, as they were attracted to the greenery and open spaces after a year of living in a "concrete jungle". The pair found Israelis to be "warm and family-like" in both places. Her advice to new Olim is to go to a small Yishuv with a support group of friends who are also making Aliya, as she feels that smaller Yishuvim are friendlier and have a greater interest in growing than larger ones.
Chaya Leah's career choice as a speech therapist was influenced by an adored and respected childhood cousin who had the same profession. After four years of study, including clinical placements in the last two years, Chaya Leah received her Bachelor of Science in Speech and Language Therapy from University College London. She works with people of all ages who have speech production, comprehension or communication difficulties and, with time, enables them to speak clearly. Speech therapy can be very successful as long as the exercises are practiced at home. There are cases when a person cannot properly pronounce certain sounds, but after six weeks is speaking perfectly clearly. One memorable client for Chaya Leah was an elderly gentleman who she helped to reminisce about his life. By finding alternatives to speaking or writing to communicate, she was able to help him out of his isolation as his communicative abilities deteriorated.
Being a speech therapist has given Chaya Leah much satisfaction, as she considers it a merit to be able to help someone with their difficulty and give them joy. She enjoys getting to know her clients and rejoicing with them as they grow towards recovery. The job also “adds structure to the haywire topsy-turvy nature of life as a mother of little children”. Chaya Leah strongly feels that she contributes to Israeli society by being a speech therapist, especially when she was a “public servant” working in schools. Now that she works privately at home, she considers improving the situation of any member of Am Yisrael in Israel is a service to the State.
Though being a working mother is not always easy, Chaya Leah manages to balance both, with family as the top priority. In the first twelve years of having small children, Chaya Leah found that she needed to do something out of the house to maintain her sanity, so she worked as a speech therapist in a school. She is now glad that she did, because otherwise she would have lost touch with her profession. Now she appreciates being with her youngest child in the morning and has cut work to a minimum in order to devote more time to her large family. In her free time, Chaya Leah loves to act and take walks in nature, or even just stand and observe the view. Another activity that she enjoys is spending quality time with people to talk about her thoughts and feelings. Though she does not volunteer for any official body, Chaya Leah always tries to make herself available to her friends when they need her and has been responsible for the yearly Purim shows in her local shul. Her ultimate Israeli vacation would be to go to the Golan, as she loves the mountains and Israeli nature, with its unique smell, color and humidity. Chaya Leah especially loves it at dusk, as it reminds her of how she felt on her first Israel machaneh at sixteen: idealistic, emotionally attached to the land, young and free. Chaya Leah’s message to future generations is to have an “edge in modern technical advances” but hold tight to the values of our forefathers. Don’t let our time-old Jewish values be carried away by Western culture.
Stuttering
As mentioned in the profile, Chaya Leah is a speech therapist. For this part of the assignment, I have decided to write about stuttering, as this is one of the problems that she treats.
“Stuttering is a speech disorder in which sounds, syllables, or words are repeated or prolonged, disrupting the normal flow of speech. These speech disruptions may be accompanied by struggling behaviors, such as rapid eye blinks or tremors of the lips. Stuttering can make it difficult to communicate with other people, which often affects a person’s quality of life.” So proclaims the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders on its webpage on stuttering (see bibliography). Some additional symptoms of stuttering are interjections or blocking. Interjections are words such as “um” or “like” that a person may place between other words in order to delay saying something that he or she will stutter on. Blocking occurs when a person's mouth is positioned as though they are about to say something but no sound comes out.
The severity of the symptoms can vary for different people in different circumstances. For example, a person’s stuttering may be worse when they are talking before a group or on the phone, but better while singing, reading or speaking in unison with someone else. Stuttering can happen to people of all ages, though it usually occurs to young children while they are developing their language skills. Most of these children out grow their stuttering. Older people who stutter may limit their participation in certain activities because they are afraid of how others will react to their stuttering, or try to hide it by rearranging their words or by simply not speaking. There are two main types of stuttering: developmental stuttering and neurogenic stuttering. Developmental stuttering occurs when young children learn speech and language skills, but it can also run in families. Normal speech is created from precise muscle movements including breathing, voice production and movements of the mouth and throat. These movements are controlled by the brain and monitored through the senses of hearing and touch. Neurogenic stuttering occurs after a stroke, head trauma, or brain injury when the brain may have trouble coordinating the separate parts of speaking because of signaling problems between it and nerves or muscles. There may also be a genetic component to stuttering, but as of now researchers are unsure.
Though there is no cure for stuttering, there are several different treatments that one may use to combat it. For children with developmental stuttering, most of the treatment falls under the parents' responsibility. Parents should speak slowly and in a relaxed manner to reduce time pressures on the child and give them more opportunities to speak. Parents are also encouraged to listen well, try to not complete their child's sentences and praise fluent speech.
Teenagers and adults who stutter often go to speech therapy, where they are taught skills to improve their speech. These "behavioral" treatments include learning how to control and monitor the rate at which they speak, or breathe. A common way to learn how to control one's speech rate is to begin by practicing smooth, fluent speech very slowly, using short phrases and sentences. The person then works up to faster speaking rates, longer sentences, and more challenging situations until they can speak in a clear, fluent and natural manner. Many people who stutter achieve their best results through a combination of self-help and speech therapy. Self-help groups aid these people in finding resources and support to face the challenges of stuttering.
On their website, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association explains the proper way to react to a person's stuttering. Though speaking with people who stutter can be uncomfortable, it is important that one does not look away, interrupt, attempt to fill in words, or look impatient or annoyed. These behaviors can cause people who stutter to feel pressured to speak quickly and actually make it more difficult for them to say what they want to in a clear and timely manner. Saying "relax", "slow down", or "take a deep breath" is also unhelpful as it is likely make a person more uncomfortable. These phrases make stuttering sound easy to overcome when in truth it is not. Of course, one should never talk down to someone who stutters or treat them differently from any other person.
However, finding a matter-of-fact, supportive way to show them that you are interested in what they say, rather than how they say it can help reduce awkwardness and uncertainty in the situation. It is also important to give them time to complete what they want to say and even to ask them what the best way to respond to their stuttering would be. Doing this can relieve tension in the conversation and make it easier to effectively communicate with a person who stutters.
“The View from Tirat Zvi”
Kadish Goldberg
"If it (the Garden of Eden) is in the Land of Israel, then the Beth Shean Valley is its gateway." (Tractate Erubin 19a)
Jogging down to synagogue, across the dew-drenched lawn,
I lift my eyes towards the east and watch the warming dawn
Illuminate the ancient home of Reuven and of Gad,
Of Yiftach and his hapless daughter –
Hills of Gilead.
Mincha done, I trudge the walkway warmed by searing sun
And see the silhouetted hills where Saul and Yehonatan
Brave, in final combat fell –
Gilboa, dry of dew.
From the south, Mehola's lights the ancient tale renew:
Elisha, newly mantled, leaves the plow to serve the seer.
Beneath the Northern Star each night, the heroes reappear:
Gideon picks, at Harod stream, three hundred brave and strong;
The prophetess, atop Mt. Tabor, sings the victor's song.
From hill to hill the holy echoes still reverberate.
Come live with me in history, at Eden's verdant gate.
For my Literary Connection to the land of Israel, I have chosen to write about “The View from Tirat Zvi” by Kadish Goldberg. Kadish Goldberg is in fact my grandfather’s first cousin (my first cousin twice removed) and, with my family, I have visited him in Tirat Zvi, the kibbutz where he lives. Though I did not intend to use one of his poems in my Israel Faces project, when I found this poem on the internet I knew that it would be perfect for the literary connection.
The poem begins with a quote from the Gemara that states the Beth Shean Valley as the gateway to the Garden of Eden. In the last verse the author uses this line to bring the whole poem together. “The View from Tirat Zvi” speaks of different places, people and events from the Tanach that are important parts of our Jewish history. The poem also reviews the different parts of the day, from dawn to night, and the four directions, though west is merely mentioned by afternoon sun and not by name as the other directions are.
In his poem, Kadish tells us that we have a story for every hill, valley, and stream in the land of Israel. We live amongst our history in a land rich with our past. As mentioned above, I have visited Tirat Zvi, yet when I was there I did not see history's stories surrounding it. My cousin, however, not only sees these stories but also feels them enough to write a poem about them. Kadish is also trying to tell us with the quote in the beginning and the last line that not only is Israel full of the Jewish people's history, but it is also our paradise to which we are trying to return: "Come live with me in history, at Eden's verdant gate."
Another attribute of this poem that I noticed is that the rhymes are sometimes split between stories. The verses are spaced according to story but the rhymes are not, making the first reading of the poem slightly difficult and stilted. Though this can be interpreted as the message of our history being more important than the poetry, I feel that the poem would have been more clear and beautiful if the rhyming and stories matched up.
The rhyming does match up, however, in the last two lines. These last verses are the ones that bring home the author's message, that tell us the point of the previous verses. They are also my favorite with their beautiful description and flowing words. After all, who can resist the allure of their command? "From hill to hill the holy echoes still reverberate. Come live with me in history, at Eden's verdant gate."
Creative Connection
For my creative connection to Israel, I have made a PowerPoint presentation depicting me and my family in different places in Israel. My family came to Israel several times on vacation before we moved here so the pictorial is really a journey in time, starting with a child's viewpoint of a fun vacation and ending with the experience of living in Israel. I have even included a photo of me at the airport proudly wearing my Nefesh B'Nefesh Olah Hadasha sticker.
The pictures of my childhood vacations show my family at different places doing different activities in Israel. The photos in the "Living in Israel" section show not only exciting trips but also holidays; it is now the experience of living in Israel, and not vacationing in Israel.
My presentation includes both the childhood vacations and the everyday life because my connection to Israel is not just one or the other but a combination. It is always changing and growing to accommodate a true well-rounded Israeli experience.
The presentation loaded without the music so click on the audio player link before viewing the show. Enjoy!
Writing a conclusion has always been difficult for me and this reflection was no exception. Figuring out how to start it is always hard but once I get started the words just flow. To start this conclusion, I have decided to begin with the rationale and simply continue writing whatever comes to mind about my Israelfaces project. In the rationale I wrote about wanting to learn about Chaya Leah as a speech therapist. However, once I began interviewing her and writing the profile, it quickly became apparent that Chaya Leah as a person was far more important than Chaya Leah as a speech therapist. Instead of learning solely about her job, I learned about her outlook on life and her own connection to Israel. It was only when I reached the background information and chose to write about stuttering that the professional side of Chaya Leah became central to my project.
For my Literary Connection I chose to write about "The View from Tirat Zvi", a poem whose message is that we live in a land full of our history. In my Creative Connection I show different places that my family has been to while on vacation in Israel. It was while touring Israel that I first learned the message of the poem. Our tour guide had a story for every place we stopped at; he told us the history behind every hill, valley and stream. When I found Kadish's poem, it not only suited the Ifaces project, but also what I had been taught about Israel from a young age.
The Israelfaces project came at a very opportune time for me. Having recently made Aliya, this project forced me to think about and cement my connection with the land of Israel. I also appreciated learning about my classmate's own personal connections to Israel. This project compelled us to learn about both ourselves and others, to try to discover Israel as a whole.
The picture of Chaya Leah with her children is from her album of family pictures and the pictures in the Creative Connection are from my family's picture files.
Table of Contents
Shoshana Goldberg
Rationale
For the first part of the Israel Faces project I have chosen to write the profile on Chaya Leah Guggenheim, a speech therapist who made Aliya several years ago and now lives in Efrat. As a speech therapist, Chaya Leah's job is to help people with speaking disorders, such as stuttering, discover that they can control their problem and learn to speak clearly. Through out this project, I hope to learn how to help people help themselves, as Chaya Leah helps people fix their problems with speech. I would also like to learn about her own experiences of making Aliya, especially as I made Aliya this past summer and would like to compare it to others' experiences.
Profile of Chaya Leah Guggenheim
Chaya Leah Guggenheim is a speech therapist who grew up in London, England, as the youngest of three children, with two doting, yet bullying, older brothers. Her father was a lawyer and businessman while her mother studied art history and sold antique jewelry.
Having always dreamed of living in Israel, Chaya Leah moved to Israel shortly after marrying her husband, Chaim, so he could learn in yeshiva. Though they lived in Har Nof for the first year, the couple soon moved to Efrat, as they were attracted to the greenery and open spaces after a year of living in a "concrete jungle". The pair found Israelis to be "warm and family-like" in both places. Her advice to new Olim is to go to a small Yishuv with a support group of friends who are also making Aliya, as she feels that smaller Yishuvim are friendlier and have a greater interest in growing than larger ones.
Chaya Leah's career choice as a speech therapist was influenced by an adored and respected childhood cousin who had the same profession. After four years of study, including clinical placements in the last two years, Chaya Leah received her Bachelor of Science in Speech and Language Therapy from University College London. She works with people of all ages who have speech production, comprehension or communication difficulties and, with time, enables them to speak clearly. Speech therapy can be very successful as long as the exercises are practiced at home. There are cases when a person cannot properly pronounce certain sounds, but after six weeks is speaking perfectly clearly. One memorable client for Chaya Leah was an elderly gentleman who she helped to reminisce about his life. By finding alternatives to speaking or writing to communicate, she was able to help him out of his isolation as his communicative abilities deteriorated.
Being a speech therapist has given Chaya Leah much satisfaction, as she considers it a merit to be able to help someone with their difficulty and give them joy. She enjoys getting to know her clients and rejoicing with them as they grow towards recovery. The job also “adds structure to the haywire topsy-turvy nature of life as a mother of little children”. Chaya Leah strongly feels that she contributes to Israeli society by being a speech therapist, especially when she was a “public servant” working in schools. Now that she works privately at home, she considers improving the situation of any member of Am Yisrael in Israel is a service to the State.
In her free time, Chaya Leah loves to act and take walks in nature, or even just stand and observe the view. Another activity that she enjoys is spending quality time with people to talk about her thoughts and feelings. Though she does not volunteer for any official body, Chaya Leah always tries to make herself available to her friends when they need her and has been responsible for the yearly Purim shows in her local shul. Her ultimate Israeli vacation would be to go to the Golan, as she loves the mountains and Israeli nature, with its unique smell, color and humidity. Chaya Leah especially loves it at dusk, as it reminds her of how she felt on her first Israel machaneh at sixteen: idealistic, emotionally attached to the land, young and free.
Chaya Leah’s message to future generations is to have an “edge in modern technical advances” but hold tight to the values of our forefathers. Don’t let our time-old Jewish values be carried away by Western culture.
Stuttering
As mentioned in the profile, Chaya Leah is a speech therapist. For this part of the assignment, I have decided to write about stuttering, as this is one of the problems that she treats.
“Stuttering is a speech disorder in which sounds, syllables, or words are repeated or prolonged, disrupting the normal flow of speech. These speech disruptions may be accompanied by struggling behaviors, such as rapid eye blinks or tremors of the lips. Stuttering can make it difficult to communicate with other people, which often affects a person’s quality of life.” So proclaims the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders on its webpage on stuttering (see bibliography). Some additional symptoms of stuttering are interjections or blocking. Interjections are words such as “um” or “like” that a person may place between other words in order to delay saying something that he or she will stutter on. Blocking occurs when a person's mouth is positioned as though they are about to say something but no sound comes out.
The severity of the symptoms can vary for different people in different circumstances. For example, a person’s stuttering may be worse when they are talking before a group or on the phone, but better while singing, reading or speaking in unison with someone else. Stuttering can happen to people of all ages, though it usually occurs to young children while they are developing their language skills. Most of these children out grow their stuttering. Older people who stutter may limit their participation in certain activities because they are afraid of how others will react to their stuttering, or try to hide it by rearranging their words or by simply not speaking.
There are two main types of stuttering: developmental stuttering and neurogenic stuttering. Developmental stuttering occurs when young children learn speech and language skills, but it can also run in families. Normal speech is created from precise muscle movements including breathing, voice production and movements of the mouth and throat. These movements are controlled by the brain and monitored through the senses of hearing and touch. Neurogenic stuttering occurs after a stroke, head trauma, or brain injury when the brain may have trouble coordinating the separate parts of speaking because of signaling problems between it and nerves or muscles. There may also be a genetic component to stuttering, but as of now researchers are unsure.
Though there is no cure for stuttering, there are several different treatments that one may use to combat it. For children with developmental stuttering, most of the treatment falls under the parents' responsibility. Parents should speak slowly and in a relaxed manner to reduce time pressures on the child and give them more opportunities to speak. Parents are also encouraged to listen well, try to not complete their child's sentences and praise fluent speech.
Teenagers and adults who stutter often go to speech therapy, where they are taught skills to improve their speech. These "behavioral" treatments include learning how to control and monitor the rate at which they speak, or breathe. A common way to learn how to control one's speech rate is to begin by practicing smooth, fluent speech very slowly, using short phrases and sentences. The person then works up to faster speaking rates, longer sentences, and more challenging situations until they can speak in a clear, fluent and natural manner. Many people who stutter achieve their best results through a combination of self-help and speech therapy. Self-help groups aid these people in finding resources and support to face the challenges of stuttering.
On their website, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association explains the proper way to react to a person's stuttering. Though speaking with people who stutter can be uncomfortable, it is important that one does not look away, interrupt, attempt to fill in words, or look impatient or annoyed. These behaviors can cause people who stutter to feel pressured to speak quickly and actually make it more difficult for them to say what they want to in a clear and timely manner. Saying "relax", "slow down", or "take a deep breath" is also unhelpful as it is likely make a person more uncomfortable. These phrases make stuttering sound easy to overcome when in truth it is not. Of course, one should never talk down to someone who stutters or treat them differently from any other person.
However, finding a matter-of-fact, supportive way to show them that you are interested in what they say, rather than how they say it can help reduce awkwardness and uncertainty in the situation. It is also important to give them time to complete what they want to say and even to ask them what the best way to respond to their stuttering would be. Doing this can relieve tension in the conversation and make it easier to effectively communicate with a person who stutters.
“The View from Tirat Zvi”
Kadish Goldberg"If it (the Garden of Eden) is in the Land of Israel, then the Beth Shean Valley is its gateway." (Tractate Erubin 19a)
Jogging down to synagogue, across the dew-drenched lawn,
I lift my eyes towards the east and watch the warming dawn
Illuminate the ancient home of Reuven and of Gad,
Of Yiftach and his hapless daughter –
Hills of Gilead.
Mincha done, I trudge the walkway warmed by searing sun
And see the silhouetted hills where Saul and Yehonatan
Brave, in final combat fell –
Gilboa, dry of dew.
From the south, Mehola's lights the ancient tale renew:
Elisha, newly mantled, leaves the plow to serve the seer.
Beneath the Northern Star each night, the heroes reappear:
Gideon picks, at Harod stream, three hundred brave and strong;
The prophetess, atop Mt. Tabor, sings the victor's song.
From hill to hill the holy echoes still reverberate.
Come live with me in history, at Eden's verdant gate.
For my Literary Connection to the land of Israel, I have chosen to write about “The View from Tirat Zvi” by Kadish Goldberg. Kadish Goldberg is in fact my grandfather’s first cousin (my first cousin twice removed) and, with my family, I have visited him in Tirat Zvi, the kibbutz where he lives. Though I did not intend to use one of his poems in my Israel Faces project, when I found this poem on the internet I knew that it would be perfect for the literary connection.
The poem begins with a quote from the Gemara that states the Beth Shean Valley as the gateway to the Garden of Eden. In the last verse the author uses this line to bring the whole poem together. “The View from Tirat Zvi” speaks of different places, people and events from the Tanach that are important parts of our Jewish history. The poem also reviews the different parts of the day, from dawn to night, and the four directions, though west is merely mentioned by afternoon sun and not by name as the other directions are.
In his poem, Kadish tells us that we have a story for every hill, valley, and stream in the land of Israel. We live amongst our history in a land rich with our past. As mentioned above, I have visited Tirat Zvi, yet when I was there I did not see history's stories surrounding it. My cousin, however, not only sees these stories but also feels them enough to write a poem about them. Kadish is also trying to tell us with the quote in the beginning and the last line that not only is Israel full of the Jewish people's history, but it is also our paradise to which we are trying to return: "Come live with me in history, at Eden's verdant gate."
Another attribute of this poem that I noticed is that the rhymes are sometimes split between stories. The verses are spaced according to story but the rhymes are not, making the first reading of the poem slightly difficult and stilted. Though this can be interpreted as the message of our history being more important than the poetry, I feel that the poem would have been more clear and beautiful if the rhyming and stories matched up.
The rhyming does match up, however, in the last two lines. These last verses are the ones that bring home the author's message, that tell us the point of the previous verses. They are also my favorite with their beautiful description and flowing words. After all, who can resist the allure of their command? "From hill to hill the holy echoes still reverberate. Come live with me in history, at Eden's verdant gate."
Creative Connection
For my creative connection to Israel, I have made a PowerPoint presentation depicting me and my family in different places in Israel. My family came to Israel several times on vacation before we moved here so the pictorial is really a journey in time, starting with a child's viewpoint of a fun vacation and ending with the experience of living in Israel. I have even included a photo of me at the airport proudly wearing my Nefesh B'Nefesh Olah Hadasha sticker.
The pictures of my childhood vacations show my family at different places doing different activities in Israel. The photos in the "Living in Israel" section show not only exciting trips but also holidays; it is now the experience of living in Israel, and not vacationing in Israel.
My presentation includes both the childhood vacations and the everyday life because my connection to Israel is not just one or the other but a combination. It is always changing and growing to accommodate a true well-rounded Israeli experience.
The presentation loaded without the music so click on the audio player link before viewing the show. Enjoy!
Reflection
Writing a conclusion has always been difficult for me and this reflection was no exception. Figuring out how to start it is always hard but once I get started the words just flow. To start this conclusion, I have decided to begin with the rationale and simply continue writing whatever comes to mind about my Israelfaces project. In the rationale I wrote about wanting to learn about Chaya Leah as a speech therapist. However, once I began interviewing her and writing the profile, it quickly became apparent that Chaya Leah as a person was far more important than Chaya Leah as a speech therapist. Instead of learning solely about her job, I learned about her outlook on life and her own connection to Israel. It was only when I reached the background information and chose to write about stuttering that the professional side of Chaya Leah became central to my project.
For my Literary Connection I chose to write about "The View from Tirat Zvi", a poem whose message is that we live in a land full of our history. In my Creative Connection I show different places that my family has been to while on vacation in Israel. It was while touring Israel that I first learned the message of the poem. Our tour guide had a story for every place we stopped at; he told us the history behind every hill, valley and stream. When I found Kadish's poem, it not only suited the Ifaces project, but also what I had been taught about Israel from a young age.
The Israelfaces project came at a very opportune time for me. Having recently made Aliya, this project forced me to think about and cement my connection with the land of Israel. I also appreciated learning about my classmate's own personal connections to Israel. This project compelled us to learn about both ourselves and others, to try to discover Israel as a whole.
Bibliography
Being a working mother. 2009. <http://blog.indianwomenshealth.com/being-a-working-mother/>.
Goldberg, Kadish. "The View From Tirat Zvi", Poetry from Israel, 18 February, 2010 <http://www.israelvisit.co.il/Poems/index.html>.
"Stuttering", American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2 February, 2010 <http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/stuttering.htm>.
"Stuttering", National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, NIH pub. No. 97-4232. May, 2002, 1 February, 2010 http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/stutter.htm.
The picture of Chaya Leah with her children is from her album of family pictures and the pictures in the Creative Connection are from my family's picture files.